Pioneer Revelstoke Brewer, Oliver Henry Allen

It looks as though one of my resolutions for 2011 should be to update the Museum blog more frequently! Sometimes the hardest part is trying to decide what to write about. I did have some requests last year to tell stories of some of our pioneer families, so I'll start there.

Seeing that we are very close to New Year's Eve, it's not hard to make a connection with the history of beer breweries in Revelstoke. For many years, Revelstoke was associated with brewing, and in fact when we purchased the latest version of the Encyclopedia Britannica in the early 1980s, the listing for Revelstoke focused on the presence of breweries. That was interesting, because at the time, there were no breweries in Revelstoke. The longest-running brewery, Enterprise Brewery, had shut down in the 1950s. The gap has now been nicely filled with the award-winning Mount Begbie Brewing Company.

The history of brewing in Revelstoke goes back to 1890, when Oliver Henry Allen came to Revelstoke. Allen came from Toronto, where his father was a brewer. Oliver Henry Allen became a lieutenant in the Canadian militia and was sent to the Riel Rebellion in 1885. In Regina, he met Mary McLean, originally from Kirkfield, Ontario, who was working at the Regina Star newspaper as the editorial writer. Oliver and Mary were eventually married, and in 1889 they came to Revelstoke. O.H. Allen erected a brewery at the base of Mount Revelstoke in the summer of 1890, in partnership with Thomas Righton. They used the water from nearby Brewery Creek to make their beer. In 1891, O.H. Allen left the partnership and built a new brewery approximately where the east abutment of the present Trans Canada Highway bridge is now. The Kootenay Mail newspaper of December 1, 1894 described the brewery as "...the largest of its kind in the Kootenay country. The buildings now present the appearance of a small village. There have recently been added to the lager beer brewery, a new ice house, with the capacity of 150 tons. The cellar is built entirely of stone, as are all the foundations of other buildings...the lager beer output is rapidly increasing and eastern and western brewers pronounce it as good as can be obtained anywhere."

The Allen brewery ceased operations in 1900, but Allen again went into business in 1903, in partnership with William Johnson, when they opened the Revelstoke Brewery, at the corner of Campbell Avenue and Fourth Street.

Oliver Henry Allen and his wife Mary had six children: Emma, Thomas, Marie, Dalton, Marjory and Jack. O.H. Allen died in Revelstoke in 1928, and Mary died in 1944. They are both buried in Revelstoke's Mountain View Cemetery.